Experimental beginnings and (slow) 11 Second progress...

So, after my panicking at the weekend and the 2D session we had yesterday I'm feeling far more positive about the 11 second club project.
Andy liked the flow of action in my (very short) hand-drawn attempt, which led him to talk to us about practicing timing by mapping out the sequence with really really rough drawings. Trying to do as many drawings in sequence as possible, while resisting the urge to play it through until you have done a large number. As you can see below, my first attempt isn't great, I got to about 60 frames, it's very quick so the angel looks like he's buzzing around on speed:

I'd say my second attempt is better, but I still have a long way to go before I'll pick up the animator's "instinct" for timing.


One the other hand, my experimental project is starting to come along nicely. Following my plan I had mapped out using two incarnations of dopesheets...
And a surprising amount of maths involved when it came to working out how many photographs I would need to take...
(and that's only one of the 3 times I did that).

I now have a fully formed plan/schedule to follow, with the exact number of photographs needed for each bit of my animation, all mapped out (hopefully) to the music I've selected from our choices (which I now hear in my head rather alot, so thanks Derek...).


Using my (excellent) plan I have now completed taking all the photographs with live human hands, with help from my very patient friend Liz, who agreed to be my lovely assistant for the evening and my nice housemates for letting me commandeer the kitchen table. Here's a frame from what will be a part of the final animation:

I'm now using my lightbox to animate my transformations and drawing the shapes of what will become my cutouts to create shadows. I'm going to use the spare time I have when I got back home this weekend to cut them all out so I can get shooting quickly after I get back.

So currently I've been drawing lots of rabbits, which I'm finding fun (I'm not quite so looking forward to drawing lots of birds) and surprisingly easy. I think it's because I have four of them at home who I always sit and spend a bit of time with while using them for drawing practise. So I'm looking forward to seeing their lovely fluffy faces this weekend. And they're too cute not to share pictures of, especially since it's on topic anyway ;) (L-R:) Molly, Chilly, Arthur & Mim.

There are Blind People with no fingers that are better at shadow puppets than me...

Using an appropriate Humdrum quote there.

So instead of going to Life Drawing tonight I've been experimenting for the Experimental project. Doing a mock up and some tests before I launch in to the real thing sometime soon.


A glass frame, covered in Grease-proof paper (do you realise how expensive Tracing Paper is? Seriously, it's like £5 for a book of A4), currently supported by some shoe-boxes to stop it falling over and smashing, my bedside light and the tripod box to rest my camera on (because the tri-pod would be to big for the frame on the floor...)



Of course I realise now that my bedroom floor isn't the best place to sit and try and get your hands in the middle of the frame. One sheet of grease-proof wasn't enough to stop the lighting hot-spot, so I added a second one:



It's also better to actually have an idea of how to do any kind of shadow puppet before you start filming... Luckily the research I did in my sketchbook paid off and I am able to present to you, a tremendously crap dog:



My favourite bit is where I move the wrong fingers and forget about the ears... I'm so going to get someone who is actually somewhat decent at making shadow puppets to film for the real thing...

Shadow Puppets and the 11 Second Club

Everytime I hear the phrase "shadow puppets" I think of this Aardman animation my brother and I watched a few years ago.
It looks like a Fireman chasing an igloo to me..



I've been looking up different types of shadow puppets(and reserved myself a tripod) this morning in preparation for the Experimental Project, I still need to get a piece of plastic or glass, but I plan to get them after our Character Animation Principles lesson tomorrow. So here's some research to look at:


Our second major project this term is to animate the November voice clip from the "11 Second Club" website. The 11 Second Club, for those who don't know, is a website that puts up a voice clip each month (which is around 11 seconds long, although this month's is actually 12 seconds), that anyone can animate to and submit their work onto the website for others to view and rate. You can use any technique you want to, although their are restrictions on the rigs you can use if you choose 3D, but the winners always seem to be hand-drawn or 3D pieces.

Obviously November's soundclip was only posted up yesterday, but I've already had a few ideas which I've made a few doodles of. Though I'm feeling rather protective of them at the moment, so I'll post them later on when it's developed into a fully fledged idea I'll work on rather than scribblings. Also, I don't want anyone to nab my ideas ;)

In more preparation for it, (it's like I'm a rocket that's been lit and suddenly my creativity and productiveness [if that's even a word] has returned in full force), I created my own dope sheets and broke down all of the soundclip for lip-sync, I'm thinking this will make storyboarding an awful lot easier (and I'm also going to try to break down the music for the Experimental project, although I think music will be harder to break down).